Indian Corporate and Work life balance debate.

There is strong debate going in Indian Corporate circles that how much time one should spend in the workplace. It was originally kickstarted by Infosys founder Narayan Murthy suggesting that Indian youth should devote 70 hours in the office working for the nation. If this debate had stop there , then it would been fine but looks like someone (more specifically L&T Chairman S N Subrahmanyan) then decided to raise the bar by saying that work week should be of 90 hours and he is utterly disappointed that he cannot ask the employees to work on Sundays.

Source

I will not jump right now if it is wrong or right, I would like to provide some facts so that we can understand what exactly the ask is? A week consist of 168 hours and I guess 8 hours of daily sleep is recommended, so let it 8x7=56 hours is rest hours and you are not working in these hours. Now India is a big and populous country and people are commuting for 3 hours daily to reach their workplace and to home, so it adds an odd 15 hours a week (ok I assumed IT works 5 days a week if it is another sector then it is 6 days a week, makes 18 hours). I am not going very generous here nor stingy when I say that 1 hour per day is required for your personal hygiene so it makes 7 hours a week. Let me add another 1 hour a day for breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Evening tea and any other extra breaks that are need for eating food, Let add 7 hours a week. Overall now it adds to 56 +15 +7 +7 = 85 hours.

Let's see, how much balance is now left for us after subtracting all essential hours needed for survival, it will come to 168-85 = 83 hours.

Since I did not add maintaining healthy routine hours like exercising, so in these 83 hours, you are supposed to do office work, take care of your health, perform family responsibilities like raising kids and taking care of elderly parents, and have societal responsibilities.

Clearly, 90 hours in a week is out of the question and looks like it is not a well thought idea at all. 70 hours might be managed by an bachelor youth if youth lives close to office and save commute time. Assuming, only 1 hour of commute is required instead of 3 hours, it will give extra 10 hours and add hours available as 93 hours. so it is still 75% of available time is dedicated to office in this case.

My 2 cents.

Based on my above data, it does not look like a feasible option, if someone has done this in his/her life, it does not mean is doable for all. I have also worked 84 hours a week for a couple of months and I felt that I started feeling exhausted not physically but in my thinking abilities, deep diving into issues, and focus to deliver good solutions.

I guess the whole point is to increase productivity, take care of ourselves and others, and earn a decent livelihood but we got into the debate of the number of hours to be worked and in my opinion, this debate is going to help no one.

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